Displaying items by tag: Israel

While rocket fire is a normal occurrence in southern Israel, the recent attacks on Tel Aviv, the country’s northern capital city, has art museums in the area taking extra precautions. The walls of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have been stripped and nearly 200 works, including approximately 100 works by relatives of the Renaissance master Pieter Brueghel the Elder, were moved to a rocket-proof safe late last week.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued to escalate, other museums are following suit. The curator of the Ashdod Art Museum in southern Israel has taken down 15 works by the leading Contemporary Israeli artist, Tsibi Geva, and placed them in a vault deep underground. The structure is designed to withstand both rocket fire and biological weapons. It was the first time the Ashdod Museum has taken down any art amid attacks since opening in 2003.

While air strikes are creeping up from the southern Israel’s traditional rocket range to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, some institutions are holding out on stashing their works. The Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, which specializes in Near Eastern antiquities and other art, has left its treasures in place. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which houses some of the country’s most prized antiquities and cultural artifacts has also continued to operate as usual.

The last time the Tel Aviv Museum of Art took down works during a conflict was in 1991 when Iraqi scud missiles pounded the city during the Gulf War.

This past March, the highest court in Germany for civil affairs ordered that 4,300 pre-World War II posters looted by Nazis were to be returned to Peter Sachs, a retired airline pilot. Sachs is the son of Hans Sachs, a Jewish dentist who fled Germany in 1938 after being arrested by Nazis and sentenced to the Saschsenhausen concentration camp.

The poster collection, worth more than $5.8 million, was previously kept at The Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Sachs started his collection in the late 19^th century at a young age and went on to publish a poster magazine called Das Plakat, found a society, and give lectures on the subject. Unique works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucian Bernhard, and Jules Cheret are included in the collection.

At the time of its confiscation, Sachs’ collection was the largest of its kind. When the Gestapo seized the posters in 1938, Sachs was told that Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wanted the works for a new museum wing dedicated to “business” art. Sachs’ collection included advertisements for travel destinations and various products as well as propaganda and political posters.

When Sachs arrived in the U.S. with his wife and young son, he assumed that he would never see his collection again. In 1961 he accepted about $50,000 from the West German government, figuring the works had not survived the war. In 1966 when Sachs learned that some of his collection was still intact in East Berlin, he made contact with communist authorities in an attempt to get the posters loaned for exhibitions. He never succeeded.

After Sachs’ death, his son Peter fought a five-year legal battle for the return of his father’s posters after a government panel denied his claim in 2007. The court ultimately ruled that Sachs had never lost legal ownership of the post collection and that Peter, Sachs’ heir, had the right to possession.

Guernsey’s auction house will handle the collections’ sale in three intervals. The first auction is scheduled for January 18, 2013 and the second and third series will take place at six-month intervals. Guernsey’s hopes to find a single buyer for the collection and has been in talks with museums in Germany, Israel, and the U.S.  

Spencer Tunick, the artist known for gathering together hundreds of naked volunteers, is planning his next project at the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea in Israel. He is using the Internet to raise money for it.

The Dead Sea, popular for the restorative powers of its mud baths and mineral waters, is shrinking more than three feet (a meter) a year, marine experts said. The drop is caused by the diversion of agricultural and drinking water and dry winters.

U.S.-born Tunick, 44, has photographed large groups of naked people at the Big Chill Festival in the U.K., and cities including London, Amsterdam, Sydney and Buenos Aires.

“This project is dear to me, one that I have dreamed of since my early days as an artist,” Tunick said in an e-mailed statement seeking backers. “I look forward to your support in exposing a part of Israel that hasn’t been seen before and at the same time bring attention to the deteriorating situation of the Dead Sea.”